


Sheer

by Robbirdthe8th (FictionalFeather)



Category: Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Apparently that's a tag, Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, Hair, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:28:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23220976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionalFeather/pseuds/Robbirdthe8th
Summary: Marnie introspecting about her maybe-not brother.
Relationships: Mary | Marnie & Nezu | Piers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	Sheer

**Author's Note:**

> I think I dreamed this up because I woke up with this whole thing in hi-def in my head.

If Marnie had ever not known, it was only because she was too young to understand.

She doesn't remember their parents as anything more than vague shapes, loving shadows so much larger than her, larger than her big brother. Piers is the one she remembers tucking her in at night, singing her to sleep and staying next to her when his voice wasn't enough to chase away the remnants of a nightmare.

It's unsurprising that most of her earliest memories are of Piers, given the situation he'd found himself in when she was still barely old enough to even have memories. Saddled with another burden as if life in Spikemuth wasn't trying enough. He was too young to raise her, and not in the 'You poor dear, you're too young to have to worry about that' sort of way.

("And when people say I look awfully young?"

"'He gets that a lot.'"

"Right. And when they ask where your parents are?"

"'They said I'm not supposed to talk to strangers.'"

"That's my girl.")

Her most vivid recollections involve her brother's hair. She can remember it short, but for years it's been so long, and she used to rail against him cutting hers, even just trimming the ends, wanting it as long as possible to match his. She doesn't know how she reacted to their parents cutting her hair, but the way she and Piers fought about her recalcitrance, she must not have given them trouble.

They'd crisscrossed over the years, who was in charge of hair.

At first it was all her. Childish, stubby fingers pulling and twisting her brother's locks into outrageous positions and jabbing him with clips her uncoordinated hands couldn't quite work yet. These memories have a soundtrack of fond laughter that isn't from either of them, so they must be from Before.

The end result of each of her experiments was without fail a disaster, enough that the photos would be blackmail material if Marnie weren't so reluctant to show them anyone else, show others what they were like in a different time. But despite the amount of hair she ripped out or the amount of gel she dropped on his shirt or the amount of hairspray she got in his eyes, Piers would always gush over her styling abilities and say how much he loved it. The pictures show adoration clearly in their matching grins, her looking so little and him looking so young. So much of a separate person from the Piers the world gets to see, but Marnie has trouble seeing anyone but the person who learned how to fake a smile just to spite the world, smiling through the anniversary of the day the four of them became the two of them, just to make sure that her birthday would only ever be made of happy memories.

Marnie only remembers excitement and candy and gifts he shouldn't have been able to afford and wants to scream her gratitude into her brother's mic.

Flash-forward just a few years to when she's old enough to care about how she looks in the eyes of the world. Now Piers is the one taming her mane every morning, practiced fingers sweeping it up and off to the side, or deftly weaving small braids. Parting it on the opposite side and spraying it into submission. Pinning and repinning, sending her off with a gala-worthy updo one day and a simple side Ponyta-tail the next.

She remembers thinking about the roles her brother played. How he acted around other people. She didn't have any words for what she saw when she watched him; it was just a sense she had, that he was different, somehow, from everyone else. She just knew that when they were alone in front of the mirror, he didn't act like any man she knew, or even like the man he was once they stepped outside, and she kept that secret knowledge close to her like something precious, something she'd fight to protect if somebody should try to tarnish it.

Just an observation, a conclusion she'd arrived at from his mannerisms: her brother had a side of himself he didn't want the world to know about. He only showed her.

She knew some of his friends were a piece of his puzzle. Sometimes, when he'd send her over to a neighbor's for the night (the stern elderly woman who probably only agreed to look after her because she'd been able to put together what happened to their parents), she'd arrive home in the morning and pass by a stranger walking away, or sometimes find one in the house, preparing to leave. Piers would say they were friends, but she doesn't remember meeting any of them more than once, and even before she understood what a one night stand was, she knew there was something adult and clandestine about how they flitted in and out of his life so quickly.

But she never connected those men to the sad smiles on his face as he looked over Marnie's finished product in the mirror. The ones that, when she pointed them out, he'd say were because she was growing up so fast, pinching her cheek and calling off her concern by embarrassing her.

Fast-forward again to when she's reached the age of 'I'm not a little kid anymore,' where any caretaker feels like a parent, and any parent is a target for the false maturity granted by rebellion.

(She's still so much a little girl in so many ways, but parts of her had to grow up too fast too long ago.)

She tries to do her own hair but she's stymied by the limited view of the back of her head she gets between two small mirrors and by how long she can hold her arms up before her fingers start to turn numb. She studies pictures, watches tutorials, tries and tries again, but her attempts are always lumpy and threaten to shake loose unless she walks like she's balancing a tray on her head.

So Piers becomes her trial run for any new style after one too many times burning either her hand or her hair with a curling iron. It isn't perfect, his hair far longer than hers, but it gets her fingers used to weaving tight braids, to coiling impeccable buns, helps her learn when to use a dab of gel and when she'll need the spray that glues everything in place.

She's determined not to let him see how much she needs his help, how grudgingly she goes to him, and schools her voice into perfect impassivity every time she asks. Still, it takes weeks before she realizes he's made no teasing remarks about where she'd be without him. He comes willingly, immediately, never even a 'maybe later.'

At first she wonders, not without guilt pointing an accusing finger at her, if he's missed her. Even if the world might look at them and still see a tight-knit pair, wouldn't be surprised to learn they had nothing but each other for so long, Marnie wonders if she's been too callous with her growing need for independence.

("Ugh, this dump has no privacy.")

("I can do it myself, stop.")

("I'll go to bed when I'm tired, Piers, quit smothering me.")

She thinks maybe he's missed how openly fond she used to be of him. (She still is; she never stopped idolizing him, she's just embarrassed to show it so much anymore.)

But she starts to see it's more than that.

Every time she declares herself finished and hands Piers a mirror, she sees that smile again, the one he'd never acknowledged she noticed. She doesn't think he even realizes he's doing it - it's small and soft and sad, things he never shows the world and only rarely shows her.

It's the kind of smile she used to wear when her friends talked about how cute her lisp was, the lisp she's since painstakingly trained herself out of. Smiling because she didn't want to call them out and be the spoilsport when she knew their intentions weren't malicious.

A smile that hides a wish.

She sees the conflict that quivers in her brother's face in the instant before he can wrangle his wistfulness into submission, and maybe she doesn't have the right words for it, but maybe it doesn't need words.

She stops pointing it out when he leaves in the glittery clips and ornamental bands after she's done, because doing so always makes him try to hide the flicker of shame before he takes it all out.

She keeps using him for practice long after she stops needing it. 'Come here, I want to try something' becomes 'Can I mess with your hair?' which eventually becomes 'Want me to do your hair?'

By now it's become routine, and he'll scoff and roll his eyes and shoot gentle gibes at her when she asks, saying she'll tie him down if he declines, but she lets him pretend it's for her.

She lets him pretend she doesn't see anything more, that she's only joking when she shows him the mirror and says he's beautiful. That she doesn't see some tiny, feisty gleam in his eyes every time she does. A glimmer of something he won't let rise to the surface but still hovers half-hidden, undaunted, every time Marnie asks for input on makeup to complete the look.

She still wonders, sometimes, if her imagination is running wild. Maybe she's wrong. There doesn't need to be any deeper meaning, some big secret behind her brother wanting to feel pretty sometimes.

But she knows Piers maybe better than anyone else ever will, and sometimes she's so close to certain that she doesn't have a brother at all.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: [Robbirdthe8th](https://twitter.com/Robbirdthe8th)


End file.
